ABSTRACT
During the Communist period, it was generally believed in the West that what Soviet sources termed "Moldovans" were actually Romanians. High politics had split the Romanian nation in two, forcing its members to live as a divided nation, in two states. Moldovan intellectuals within the Democratic Agrarian Party formed the association Pro Moldova and sought to develop a suitable ideology for an independent Moldovan state. After 1992 the Moldovan concept of the "nation" developed in various directions. The idea of the ethnically defined nation-state was gradually replaced by other concepts—sometimes more multiethnic, at other times civic, at still other times binational. The new special treatment accorded to the Gagauz in the Moldovan concept of the state was followed up by an agreement with the Gagauz leaders in December 1994. A new law gave autonomy to a separate Gagauz homeland, Gagauz Yeri, comprising the area around several villages in southern Moldova.
